“Forget about Klout scores, there will be competitive rating systems for everything and it will be available to anybody at a push of a button. Wouldn’t it make sense to assign numbers for single people on the dating scene based on user ratings?”

Well, it is happening. I spit coffee on my computer keyboard when I read this announcement:

CrushBlvd, a startup based in Silicon Valley and purveyor of eye candy, launches a new social networking site for beautiful people. CEO Tina Lee points out the highlights of her new venture, “Looking at and connecting with beautiful people is fun, but it’s hard to find and socialize with them on an everyday basis. CrushBlvd solves this problem by creating a beautiful community that encourages social interaction.”

CrushBlvd uses a Crush score, which combines a Klout score and social networking features into a unique measuring tool, to determine members’ level of influence according to their looks and their ability to engage others. The higher the score represents the higher the popularity and attractiveness of the member.

Lee believes that the best way to connect with beautiful people online is not by another agonizing dating site, but through a pain free social networking site. “We are proud to have created this wonderful niche, so users can have easier access to connecting with our attractive members regardless of their relationship status,” she said.

Purveryor of eye candy? Excuse me. I am going to be sick now.

Congratulations to Tina Lee, who has just cornered the market on vacuity.

And this is just the beginning folks.

Here are my next business model predictions:

PolitiK — Merging Klout scores with political activities. Wouldn’t finding people via influencer topics be an outstanding way to connect with supporters and potential donors? So much easier than recruiting at rallies and you could find backers in every community.

UKlout — Connecting topic influencers on college campuses. Why not do semantic analysis to find people who are like you on your college campus? A useful tool, especially for freshman trying to find friends.

Teenie Tweetie — Teen agers are civilization’s greatest raters and comparers. When wil they have their own Klout-style rating system?

BOUNCE* – Bloggers: Overweight, Under-paid, Neglected, Cuddly, and Erudite. I am the charter member. I’m developing my top secret algorithm that accounts for girth, income and the number of infographics per tweet. Very complicated. I am also working on Bounce Perks. For my Bounciest members, I will send weekly graft from all my rich advertisers. Once I get them.

Who among you will start these companies? Who is going to join CrushBlvd and admit it? Bounce on {grow} community. Bounce on.

*This is a joke. I know humor doesn’t translate across cultures sometimes. So to be clear, I’m not really doing this!

If you hate Klout … and you probably do … try to take a deep breath and read ahead with an open mind.

Nothing seems to get rational people in a frenzy as much as Klout and its attempt to measure “influence.” I have immersed myself in the world of online power and influence over the past six months and feel like at this point I have probably studied this topic more than any person on earth! And, unlike every other blogger on the planet it seems, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a very important development. In fact, a historically important development.

Before I get into why, let’s knock a few obvious facts out of the way:

Klout cannot measure every type of influence. Never has. Never will.

Klout can be “gamed.” Is there anything on the Internet that can’t be?

It is uncomfortable being publicly rated and compared to other people.

Yes, it is stupid that Klout thinks you’re influential about lamps or sheep. It is still in the early stages of development.

Now, for a different perspective.

Before the Internet, you had to actually accomplish something to be a celebrity. Today, anybody can drum up some attention for themselves by creating content that virally moves through the social web.

Even me.

In my small world here in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, I might influence my family, maybe some business colleagues, and that’s about it. But give me a blog and a Twitter account and I have people from all over the world telling me that I have impacted them. That is a situation that could only have happened at this precise moment in human history! It is a possibility enabled by technology – widespread access to low-cost, high-speed Internet service and free/easy social publishing tools.

Just a few years ago, there is no way you would have heard of Mark Schaefer. Now I’ve been quoted in the New York Times and featured on MSNBC for just one reason: I am able to create, and move, my content.

So even a nobody like me can become an Influencer. And that’s pretty darn cool. In fact, we’re in an era where you don’t have to be a sports star or a politician to have influence. All you have to do is write about your favorite topic and you can have your chance to be a little bit famous.

Content is power.

The ability to create and move content is the absolute key to online influence. So think about this — To the extent that you could actually measure that, wouldn’t you also be creating an indicator of relative influence?

That’s what Klout is trying to do. They are finding the people who are experts at creating, aggregating, and sharing content that moves online. Nothing more.

That may seem rather simple but it’s actually complex, and from an academic and business point of view, a significant development.

“Influence” has been one of the most studied aspects of politics, marketing, sociology, and psychology and yet it has never really been measured in a statistically valid way. Until now. People creating content is an action. Having a link clicked, or a message re-tweeted, is an effect. Finally, there is something to measure in this field. In fact there are billions of actions and effects to measure and compare every day!

So an important distinction is that if you’re not on the social web, you’re obviously not being measured. To argue that I should not have a higher Klout score than Oprah is missing the point. Of course I should have a higher score. Oprah doesn’t tweet, so she can’t be measured. That does not mean that GLOBALLY I am more powerful than Oprah. It means that in my little sliver of the online world, among my audience, and on my topics, I can be influential. And, so can you.

A word of mouth revolution

For decades companies have spent big, big money to try to identify and nurture word-of-mouth influencers. This is an expensive and inexact science. Can you see how amazing it is to now be able to quickly, easily, and cheaply find and connect with the people who are influential about movies in Memphis? Or who generate buzz about beer in Berlin?

You can imagine that companies would be all over this. Some of the biggest and brightest marketers and brands like Disney, Audi, Starbucks, and Nike have incorporated Klout influencers into their traditional marketing efforts. And it is working. According to Klout, each influencer in one of their Perk programs generates an average of 30 pieces of content and millions of possible impressions. The cost per thousand impressions is incredibly low compared to other forms of advertising and it is ORGANIC since it is being generated by people who already love the brands.

Now, you can go ahead and keep writing blog posts all day long about how stupid Klout is and I’ll simply suggest that you are putting emotion ahead of facts and doing a disservice to your customers. Of course all of the negatives at the top of the article are true and valid. But don’t miss the forest for the trees. This trend is happening with you or without you, so calm yourself and start to study this as an important online marketing weapon.

Social scoring is improving. It is a historically significant development. Big brands care. And so should you. Right?

Rebecca Denison is an outstanding, bright young professional and one of my favorite Twitter friends. She also happens to take exception with some of my musings on Klout and influence. You know … I STILL think she’s bright! In the spirit of balanced debate I encouraged her to write a guest post. Here we go …

Recently Mark wrote about the ins and outs of Klout, complete with some great insights from one of the co-founders. It was a great look at the score and all of the work that goes into it.

The factors of influence were discussed, and we learned that Klout now accounts for 50 of these so-called factors. While I respect what Klout is trying to do, I must vehemently disagree that their score measures influence.

Klout measures tweets, retweets, popularity and the like. Klout measures numbers. True influence is much more than numbers. And true influence is felt both online and offline, and an automated digital algorithm will never be able to measure this accurately (at least not with data available today).

I’ve included what I believe to be just five factors of true influence below. What else would you include? This list will likely never be exhaustive.

Factors of True Influence

1. Actions Inspired: A common way to understand influence is to consider actions inspired. There is something to be said for changing minds, but I’ve always felt true influence leads to action. For example, when visiting a new brunch place in my neighborhood, I tweeted asking whether I should order the banana toffee French toast or eggs Benedict. A friend I often look to for restaurant recommendations in Chicago suggested the French toast, so guess what I ordered? That’s influence.

Think about measuring this. Yes, score like Klout consider retweets, which are an inspired action (I’ve influenced you to share something), but they can never account for so many other actions because they cannot see them or track them. If you tweet and recommend French toast, and I order it, that’s incredible influence, but it would go unnoticed.

2. Context/Topic: Influence is incredibly contextual or topical. I will never be influential to anyone about being an 18 – 24 year old male. I like to think that I’m influential to some people about things I’m knowledgeable and passionate, though. I’m the first to admit I do not have an overwhelming following (or even an impressive one), but I pull some weight in certain communities. Take the following tweet, for example:

I may not be an expert on rocket science or SEO or sheep, but when it comes to UNC (and UNC basketball), Nick finds me influential.

I know, I know. Algorithms attempt to measure this. But would Klout know that the above tweet indicates I know a lot about UNC basketball or just UNC? Klout cannot read the context and understand that McCants was an incredible player back when I was a senior in high school just waiting for my turn to go to Chapel Hill.

3. Situation/Location: As much as context can be important, situation and location can be just as critical. If you ask me for recommendations for brunch locations (I LOVE brunch), but you live in NYC, unfortunately you’re out of luck. I don’t have much experience with brunch in NYC. Ask me about brunch in Chicago, and specifically in Lakeview or Lincoln Park, and I’m practically an expert.

Measuring this is not always easy since we don’t always volunteer our location information. And even when we do, sometimes we lie. I know a certain Canadian who uses 90210 as his zip code and was thus asked by Klout to be an US ambassador for Spotify. A quick peek at his Twitter profile would reveal his true location, but an algorithm can’t do this.

4. Timing: This relates to context and situation. Influence can be seasonal. While my friend Nick (above) seems to find me influential about UNC basketball, I can tell you far more people agree with him during the college basketball season. I’m really not all that influential about NCAA basketball this time of year, but I’m more influential about summer activities in Chicago (something which I don’t have influence over in December).

Trying to account for seasonal influence becomes tricky. Should I be influential about UNC basketball? How quickly does my influence fade? What if I participate in a weekly Twitter chat, but suddenly stop. Should my influence as a member of that community fade more or less quickly than as a UNC basketball fanatic?

5. Reach/Popularity: It matters. I’d love to pretend that it doesn’t matter how many followers you have, but reach or popularity will always matter to some degree. If I do have expertise on certain topics, I will have the opportunity to influence more people if I have more people following me on Twitter or connected to me on Facebook. Please don’t believe that having one million followers is the solution to anything, but know that if you are an expert, having more followers who care and are influenced by you is better than having fewer.

My biggest issue with measuring reach or popularity is that for the folks with astronomical followings (ahem, Mark ;)), this factor can often skew their influence score. I don’t care how many followers he has, I will never consider Mark a reliable expert on being a teenage girl. Period. Because these numbers can be so high (and because they vary so much), this factor is really quite tricky to fairly factor into any influence measurement.

Some of these factors overlap a bit, but these are the five that I refer to most often when defining influence. What factors are most important to you? How do you define influence?

Rebecca Denison is a social media analyst at Digitas in Chicago who is passionate about all things measurement and all things UNC.

I was recently interviewed about Klout and social influence by Vinícius Cherobino of Galileu, a scientific magazine in Brazil. I thought his questions were especially good and wanted to share this content with you:

Galileu: How do you view the rankings and people’s influence score published on the Internet (such as Klout or Peer Index)? What are the main consequences of this process?

Schaefer: There are two quite interesting implications of this development. First, many people are upset over the fact that they are being publicly rated, evaluated and compared. The debates on this topic can be quite emotional! On the other hand, this is a historically important development for marketers. It’s certainly not a perfect system, but we are taking the first steps toward quantifying influence, or at least a small slice of it. Companies like Klout are in the silent movie stage. Let’s give them time to see how it works out.

We are currently seeing many companies creating their own influence rankings with their own methodology. How do you think this will evolve? Will it be a market with many players or only a few?

I think it will develop in several ways. Although in most industries there are frequently 2-3 strong competitors, on the Internet, typically just one company dominates a niche. We like to have companies compete for our money, but we don’t like it when they compete for our attention. Humans have limited time and attention and usually we focus on one platform over time. So I think a leading company will emerge. However, I think several niches could emerge too. The entry barriers are relatively low. So why wouldn’t we have applications rating teens, people in geographic regions, or single people?

After the evolution of influence scores, do you think it is possible to imagine every Internet user being judged by their position in the influence score (from possible employers to retail chains)?

There are limitless opportunities to use these scores. I heard of an interesting use where a company is looking at how connecting to people with high influence scores can affect the sentiment toward a company. It’s mashing up two fields. Learning who true influencers are is an incredibly useful tool for many companies in almost any industry.

You mentioned the beginnings of a caste system in the Internet through the scores. How deep can this system can be? Do you think that a regular user will be able to defend him/herself of that?

This is a development that I think will drive some crazy, and unfortunate, behavior. People who have high influence scores will get lots of valuable gifts, even trips and vacations. People with low scores will get nothing. What do you think will happen? The people who get nothing will try any crazy scheme possible to get something or they will become resentful of those who are getting the gifts. I recommend that people stay centered and just be themselves. However, I don’t think many people will follow that advice!

Some critics claimed that this kind of “influence ranking” tends to foster even more inequality on the web (VIPs have everything, regular users have nothing). How do you see this kind of critique?

Life is unequal. So it’s no surprise that the web is unequal. But here is another way to look at it. Today, only the famous celebrities get free vacations, cars and endorsement deals. But now lots of normal people who just happen to be an expert and influential in something can experience a little celebrity too. It’s a way for hard working people to get noticed and rewarded for their work too! Not everybody can be a movie star, but everybody can be influential in something and work hard to show it.

On the other hand, some defend the idea of democratization of influence. Not only politicians and actors, for instance, but regular users can fight for influence. What is your opinion?

I think this is definitely true. We are in the era of the citizen influencer. Everybody can have a voice. There are many common working people who can now be recognized for their authority. I think even I am an example of that. I’m not a pro athlete or celebrity. But I do work hard on my blog {grow} and it is making a difference in people’s lives. So, yes, I am a common person but I have influence too.

Apparently, there is a gap between online influence and offline influence. Will the technology be able to bridge this? Or do you think this will remain in separate arenas?

This is really the core of the online influence debate. As far as I can see into the future, I think there will always be some disconnect between offline and online behavior. However, with geo-location applications it is becoming more possible to tie online behaviors with say, going to a store or eating at a restaurant. This is being recorded and connected to conversations. Augmented reality will take us even further in that direction. So there will be a bigger online-offline connection than people can imagine, I think. The technology is moving us toward that connection, not away from it.

How can the users’ influence be combined with other types of data mining from social network sites? Could this mean more privacy concerns?

For the most part, the scores are being determined through public information like tweets and status updates. So it is aggregating and sorting information you are volunteering any way. In that respect I don’t think there will be additional privacy concerns but I do think the profiling that will occur is going to startle people. But that is occurring everywhere. If I type an email in Google, moments later ads related to the subject of my email appear. That sort of profiling is at the heart of these advertising models and it will just get much more detailed and granular.

This could be another step of celebrity culture developing into the internet?

I think people make celebrities into celebrities, not the Internet! We are already in a celebrity culture. The Internet simply amplifies it.

What do you think? How is power and influence being re-defined on the Internet? Are you more influential online or offline?

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-Mark Schaefer